WTF?

International development groups say budget cut will end Canadian programs abroad

OTTAWA — Humanitarian groups are giving Tuesday’s federal budget a thumbs down, saying a projected $1.3-billion cut to foreign aid will end Canadian projects and create a backslide in progress on fighting disease and hunger.

“There is certainly a gap between rhetoric and reality in this year’s budget,” said Kate Higgins, the head of Cooperation Canada, which represents more than 95 non-profits.

“It undermines progress on development and Canada’s contribution to progress on development around the world.”

A 1.3 Billion cut? That’s a start but how do we end up with 95 non-profits reliant on the tax-payer teat? I bet that’s just the tip of the ice-berg.

How many of these actually accomplish anything?

The most arresting chart in last year’s budget was the one showing projected economic growth rates in the member countries of the OECD over the next 40 years. In last place: Canada.

At last, we all thought: the Trudeau government had belatedly recognized Canada has a growth problem. Having fixated almost exclusively throughout its first seven years on redistributing income, perhaps it had now been persuaded of the importance of making some. True, Budget 2022 offered little in the way of new ideas to that end, but give it time. Rome wasn’t rethought in a day.

Trudeau and Freeland up the ante on a clean economy

Justin Trudeau’s basic argument is that Canada and the world face both historic challenges and unique opportunities — and the Liberals are better suited than the Conservatives to overcoming those challenges and seizing those opportunities.

Mind you, the two parties don’t entirely agree on which issues are most deserving of attention right now. But there is no bigger challenge than climate change and the transition to a low-carbon future it requires. And Tuesday’s federal budget — described by the Canadian Climate Institute as “the most consequential budget in recent history for accelerating clean growth in Canada” — could be a pivotal piece of the Liberal response.

On April 1, Canadian MPs and the prime minister will get a raise, and a new poll shows 80 percent of Canadians are opposed to it.

A backbench MP now receives an annual salary of $189,500, according to the Leger poll commissioned by the Canadian Taxpayer Federation (CTF). Such an MP is due to receive a raise of $5,100 annually, the fourth raise since the onset of the pandemic. The three previous MP raises totalled $10,600.